Tag Archives: WTF?

WTF Album Covers: From Nelson To Jesus

An album cover is like an advertisement for your music. The image can sell a record, or it can make people run away screaming from your record at a GLANCE. So with that notion in mind, one DOES have to wonder what these artists were contemplating when they settled on these particular images. And remember, kids, if you put your work on public display, you invite commentary. Nobody with an album cover is safe from the snickering.

“Because They Can” sort of screams “contractual obligation”, doesn’t it? The gents themselves couldn’t be bothered to show up for the art direction meeting on this one? Too busy trying on new silver moon boots to give a toss? You tell US what was going on here.

It would be very funny to make a bunch of jokes about how Vladimir Putin likely owns this record and listens to it on a nightly basis, but nobody in the Turntabling office is willing to risk getting stuck in the leg by an umbrealla tip loaded with a Ricin pellet.

Those dresses are likely worth a fortune now on the vintage market. The suits those poor bastards are wearing? Not so much. There’s too much of a frontal attack on the eyeballs for this album cover, WTF is going on here? And why do these goddamned families keep putting out records?

They were an Austin, Texas Christian metal band, but one does wonder how their fundie beliefs lined up with aping Freddie Mercury who was basically everything that Christian metal bands hated back in the Satanic Panic 80s. How did nobody review the grimacing on this album cover and say, “Hey lads, any chance we could use a photo where you don’t look like you’re all passing a kidney stone?”

WTF Album Covers: Explaining Sex To Your Little Girl

WTF album covers explaining sexFor a start, any vinyl record that presumes to teach you something about sex already has a lot working against it…but throw a creepy/pervo Norman Rockwell vibe into the mix with the cover art and you have WTF gold. And look at that cup of coffee she’s got there…whatever she’s learning from that record, she’ll be up all night thinking about it.

I discovered this one at the similarly WTF-n-vintage-obsessed Vintage Everyday blog. Good stuff there…and a lot of it!

–Joe Wallace

 

Bad Album Covers: Lionel Blair Aerobic Dancing

Lionel Blair Aerobic Dancing WTF album coversThere’s a combination of horrors on this album cover which all add up to WTF. At first glance I didn’t think this record artwork was SO very bad–it seems to be a typically cheesy 80s record. But the more I looked at it, the more I realized how much I was falling in love with its sheer awfulness.

The five-o’clock shadow on his goofy grinning face, the utterly horrifying white shorts (which seem to hint that they aren’t used to being on…for very long) and that enormous HELMET of hair…throw those tube socks into the mix and you have one great big ol’ WTF album cover.

P.S. HOW does ANYBODY do aerobics to the ET theme song?

–Joe Wallace

A Random Collection of Square Vinyl and Flexi Discs

…because square vinyl is so wrong that it’s right.

Limahl Square VinylKajagoogoo bootlegs from Russia? Who knew? (Via Kajafax)

Elaquent Square Vinyl PostcardThis is a flexi-disc on one side and a postcard on the other. Pretty great for a promo item…brilliant, but who would ruin it by writing on it?  (via SlyVinyl)

The Anomalys square recordNo idea whatsoever what this band sounds like, but red transluscent vinyl is gorgeous whether it’s flexi or not. (Via The Anomalys on Twitter)

Beatbox square vinylSynth and drum machine nerds need no explanations here. Square and awesome are only part of the equation. (Via Rusty Knuckles)

So many records, so little time…but not ALL square flexis are about the music.

FloppyRom_Magazine

–Joe Wallace